Wednesday, October 14, 2015

a witchy week for inktober and star for illustration friday

The second week of inktober,
a month long challenge to draw with ink every day, ended today. This week featured three witch kitties, sometimes appearing with their witches, sometimes not. One of
the images also incorporates the Illustration Friday prompt this week (star).

My favorite from this week was hard to pick, so I picked two. The first image is of the kitties taking a broom out for a ride without permission (also the first image I did this week - it's the one I hinted at in my last post):

I'm thinking about doing this image either in color, or with greys for more shading in the black and white piece. Then again, after playing around with it a bit, I might just like it like this!

My second favorite is the last image of the week, the one I did today of the kitties with their witch family:

For Illustration Friday, I incorporated stars in the sky for a nighttime broom ride with the witches and kitties. It turned out more Starry Night than I intended. Guess my time standing by the painting when I worked at MOMA rubbed off on my subconscious.

As for the images for the rest of the week, the kitties tried their paws at reading a spell book:

The littlest witch held story time for the three kitties:

The kitties watched as the witches brewed up something scary in their cauldron:

And the kitties wore / sat on the witches' hats (this was a marker experiment that didn't turn out the way I wanted to, and ended up looking muddy and losing the original drawing line*):

For week three of inktober (starting tomorrow) I'll be drawing pumpkins!

* In my opinion, part of these art challenges is about having fun, and part of it is about experimenting using mediums and/or techniques you don't usually use. It's hard to do that (for me anyway) when you're posting your art every day, but I'm trying to anyway. Most of the experiments have been successes. Another one I'm still working on is the color or shading for the top image of the kitties on the broom. So far none of those experiments have worked. And unlike the kitties with hats picture, I have a scan of the black line work, which I like, so that's the one I'm posting.

Author/illustrator Stephanie Ruble has been making art ever since she could hold a crayon, and making up stories since she learned to talk. She's currently working on new picture books, images for her portfolio, and drawing art for unusual holidays. Thanks for visiting!
Picture Book: Ewe and Aye written by Candace Ryan, Illustrated by Stephanie Ruble - in bookstores now.